Thursday 31 August 2017

Just One Pack...of 2017 Donruss Football

The other rack pack I picked up alongside the MVP pack I posted earlier.
Cliff Avril - Here's the first card. I do like the slight splash of colour at the side, but there is a slight shading at the bottom of the photo, creating a very dark look to some of the cards.
Tom Brady
Dak Prescott
Clay Matthews
Thomas Rawls
Tedy Bruschi - The set mixes retired players in with the regular base, much like last year at a rate of one per team. Some different choices, which Tedy would certainly count as.
Mike Glennon - Your photoshop special, which I find amusing since Trubisky was the pack coverboy.
Damon Harrison - A rookie card of a non-rookie. This year, any player who is getting their first card got this RC designation. The Bills have rookie cards of Richie Incognito in some sets. This also shows the shading more clearly, as the bottom of the card looks like night on an obvious sunny day.
LeSean McCoy - A Bills card!
Jared Cook
Haloti Ngata
Zach Brown
Adam Vinatieri - A kicker card! WOO-HOO!
Rich Gannon - Another odd choice for the retired player on the Raiders.
Devin Funchess
Hunter Henry
Carson Palmer
Ryan Tannehill
Joe Haden
Mark Brunell - You really don't have too many choices for the retired player on teams like the Jags.
Jerry Rice - No complaints about this choice.
Tavon Austin
Ty Montgomery - Blue Press Proof
Jimmy Graham - Blue Press Proof
Harrison Smith - Blue Press Proof
Stacy Coley -  - Blue Press Proof - The promised 4 press proofs. With the Vikings beating the Pack here 2-1, I can't break out the MST3K Packers clip in good conscience. At least Coley is actually a rookie.
Odell Beckham Jr. 1981 Baseball Design - I like this design being ported over to football.
DeShone Kizer - The Rated Rookie that is part of the base set.
Jordan Willis - The standard, non Press Proof rookies.
Davis Webb

And there you go. I like the colour on the borders, but don't like the darkening of the photos. I went all in with Score, so this will probably be my last of this product. At least some more base content for future mailers came my way.

Tuesday 29 August 2017

11 for the price of 2

Seems like a good way to describe a group of cards I picked up as a lot, when I only really wanted 2 cards in the whole group.
The big draw in the group was this Brandon Sutter for my 2/14 collection. He's made two stickergraph appearances in the Artifacts Autofacts subset, and I've got both of them. This is my 56th card of his, putting him 100 behind Marian Gaborik for the hockey lead.
And the other card that was of interest to me was a /75 of Mike Cammalleri for my next mailing to TMM.

So, what else filled up this lot of cards?
Well, this could be considered somewhat closer to another want from the group - an on-card autograph for the mask binder.
Let's flash back to the Sutter, and two more autographs from that same subset. One of someone who is still active, along with one of someone who only played a handful of games. Clarke's is kinda interesting. I like how the A stands alone in the middle of the sticker.
More Autofacts. The circular frame design is a reminder of this year's Ginter release. I just with they'd used a bigger font for the text on the front. The player's name is on the left, the number is on the bottom and the team is on the right.
The only horizontal card.
The package ends with a trio of Future Watch autographs from SP Authentic. If you'd look into the Future when these cards came out, you'd know that Torrey Mitchell is the only one of these three still in the NHL at the point.

And there you have a bunch of random autographs.

Monday 28 August 2017

Masked Monday Clean-Up

Time to reach into the COMC to-be-posted box, and pull out the mask binders cards that have yet to be posted. All 4 of them.
I've finally found a situation when I don't completely hate the Gorton's fisherman logo for the Islanders: When it actually looks kinda bad-ass across Eric Fichaud's forehead.
Traktor Chelyabinsk might have my favourite logo in hockey, and like the fisherman, it is enhanced when it is placed on the mask of a player.
Another brick wall themed mask. I'm a sucker for the classics.
And a simple design on Ron Hextall, with the team colours, but I like how the mirroring of the logo on the other side of the helmet reverses on the side visible on the image. And since you can see the 75th Anniversary and All-Star logo on this, you can trace the photo to being from the 91-92 season. That's also the only numbered card in this post, being /199.

And there you go.

Sunday 27 August 2017

2017 Adventures in Repacks - Part 24 - The Sunday Standard

And back to the Dollarama for the second post of the weekend. Interestingly, I saw $4 hanger repacks with 100 Magic cards in them yesterday. Can hockey versions be far behind?

Doing the two-step again, with a $1 hanger and a $2 Surprise Bag, and starting with the cheapest.
2014 Ultra - Mikko Koivu - I grabbed this for the card on the back, not the front
1990 Bowman - Joe Mullen
1996 Score - Owen Nolan - A nice mid 90's celebratory photo.
1991 Score - Garry Valk
1993 Parkhurst - Jeremy Roenick - A contender, along with the Nolan for most interesting photo in the pack.
2003 UD - Derian Hatcher - This is the fun of random cards from repacks. I'd completely and totally blanked on his tenure in Detroit. All 15 games of it. He'd go on to 3 seasons with Philly, but would have far more Wings cards than Flyers cards.
2002 Portraits - Pavel Bure - Another rather random set for these.
1990 Topps - Bob Carpenter
1990 Score - Mike Krushelnyski
1990 UD - Paul Fenton
1989 OPC - Ray Ferraro
1993 UD Sergei Klimovich
1993 Stad. Club - Mike Keane - A nice little photo of an in-game battle.
1991 7IS - Gord Harris
2010 ITG H&P - Jordan Schroeder - Why'd I get this? The great Manitoba Moose jersey!

A good number of keeper cards here. And now, the Surprise bag!

And its contents!
2 packs. 2 repacks. A perfect mix.
Believe it or nuts, the Pro Set pack contained a card I needed for the PC! Somehow, I didn't have that Calle Johansson in my 2.14 collection, and maybe not that Hough for my Rangers alum collection. A worthwhile junk wax break.
The 90's pack was less providing. I even had the Messier checklist.
The HOF pack. I'm guessing I already have that Robinson in my alum binder. Some more H&P, this time with a nice Oil Kings logo.

And the OPC. I'll take a nice shiny card, and yet another Cammalleri bound for a new home in a Thrashers-intensice pack.

There you have it!

Saturday 26 August 2017

M! V! P! M! V! P!

Time to dig into the first set for the 17-18 season!

And my first 17-18 card is:
I'm not overly crazy about the faded backgrounds. But this isn't too different from last year's look, and at least it isn't the border-intensive design of years prior.

Standard MVP backs. I do like the pronunciation guide on the back, but if you need help pronouncing Mike Green, you really don't have much a chance with practically any other name. Time to look at the rest of the pack.

Alex Killorn
Jakob Silverberg
Martin Hanzal
Zack Smith - My first 17-18 Sens card!
Chris Kreider
Loui Eriksson
Tomas Plekanec
Ryan Strome
Braden Holtby - The first mask binder card of 17-18.
William Nylander
Jonathan Machessault - No Golden Knights content in this early release.
Victor Arvidsson
Nazem Kadri - Rangers alum.
Kari Lehtonen
Erik Karlsson - WOO-HOO! There's only one of the SPs in the retail hangers, so it is nice to land one of the two Sens that are in this portion of the set (Colin White is the other).
Mark Schiefele (Puzzle back) - One of the parallels.
It is some random Shark. I didn't pull any other Sharks content in this, so I can't rule anybody out. I'm also way too lazy to do any research beyond "It can't be a goalie'.
Josh Ho-Sang (Silver sig) - And the other of the more common parallels. I really like the use of a black stripe to make the signature pop.
Tuukka Rask
Jake Guentzel
Bo Horvat
Brayden Schenn
Andrew Ladd
Gustav Nyquist
Corey Perry
Alec Martinez
Milan Lucic
Patric Hornqvist - Scanning this solely to break up the wall of text.
Tyler Johnson
Tyler Seguin
Sergei Bobrovsky
Cory Schneider
Adam Larsson - And the final card.

It's MVP. You know what you're getting. I still don't understand SPs in a retail friendly set, but that's the way things are with Upper Deck releases nowadays. At least OPC tend to have more than 1 SP per pack. And that's what I'll wait for if I opt to do a set build this season.